Today we feature a mini-interview with Alexander Grechishkin, CEO of Lismore Software Systems, Ltd. The company came to spotlight recently after their release of their x86 emulator for Mac OS X, Guest PC. We also include three screenshots of the application.1. Is Guest PC written from scratch, was it ported over OS9 or does it use another engine (e.g. Bochs)
Alexander Grechishkin: Lismore Software Systems, was one of the companies that released PC emulator for Macintosh. Our product, Blue Label Power Emulator for classic Mac OS, was released a little bit later than the one by Connectix and Insignia in 1996. Guest PC is a fully rewritten emulator based on the Blue Label. We had lots of feedback and recommendations from our users, we have changed our product so that it would meet users requirements.
2. What are the main features of GuestPC and what are its advantages over Microsoft’s solution?
Alexander Grechishkin: Our competitor is Virtual PC standalone version, comparing to it I would
say:
– our emulator is bundled with a preinstalled DOS
– we have a built-in Windows setup assistant that allows to easily install Windows
– officially we support all Windows version unlike VPC that supports Windows XP and 2000 only
– our price is more adequate – $69.99 vs. $109.99
– we have a more reasonable upgrade policy to upgrade to Guest PC from any BLPE you will pay 34.99 but not $77.99. Moreover, the following Guest PC version will be free for our customers.
3. What are the system requirements of Guest PC? What is its price?
Alexander Grechishkin: Guest PC only requires Mac OS 10.3 or later, no other limitations. Guest PC is available at $69.99.
4. What operating systems are supported? Have you tested with Linux or FreeBSD?
Alexander Grechishkin: Officially now we support all Windows versions, some Linux versions will run, however we do not support them in the full volume.
5. Do you have plans to port your emulator to Linux for PPC?
Alexander Grechishkin: We are not going to port the emulator to Linux PPC, however sometimes ago we had negotiations regarding this issue.
Honestly, a minute or so browsing their site would have gotten the information that I got from this interview.
A review would be much more useful.
While I don’t expect Guest PC (GPC?) to be faster then VPC (for the price), I’d love to see benchtests between the two emulators running an optimal (Win2k for GuestPC?) Windows OS and various Windows benchmarks.
Or maybe just a user review of Guest PC.
My thoughts exactly. I’m far more interested to see how it performs compared to Virtual PC to see if it justifies the price. It’s no point being cheaper than Virtual PC if your performance is utterly rubbish.
Is it fast? Can it handle 3d Accelleration?
>Is it fast?
Possibly not as fast as VPC.
>Can it handle 3d Accelleration?
No, it can’t. That much is obvious. If MS can’t do that who have access to the DX source code, no one can.
You don’t have to access DX code to implement 3d accel.
You just need to make a good video driver that will proxy 3d from guest to host.
I haven’t had a chance to use it much, and my Mac is probably not optimal for it’s use, or even representative of what it will be running on mostly…
(I have a G4 500mhz unit with 512mb of RAM and a 40gb 5400rpm HDD)
It’s slower than VPC on the same hardware. I can’t tell you how much, but some.
The installation of Windows XP Pro was painless and automatic. I just entered my name, company and serial number and the Wizard did all the rest.
I turned off the monitor and went to bed, and in the morning, when I turned it back on, I was sitting at a Login Window for Windows XP.
I’ll know more after next weekend when I get a chance to play some more…
Yea I know it’s off topic, but wasn’t CherryOS which was supposed to be released in October, bumped up to Q1 ?
I’m glad they’re offering an upgrade price, but they haven’t added a place on the website to order it at the upgrade price.
For those who say that the interview had nothing in it that couldn’t be found on the website, the upgrade is certainally news.
You are correct. A while back someone at Microsoft took one of the quakes and wrote a Opengl-D3D proxy dll that just intercepted the Gl calls.
Wine already does this, or how would you be able to play these DX games on Linux?
CherryOS was a hoax, based on the real life pear pc project: http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/
Which is available today.
This interview with a trusted website, gives credibility to the compnay and the product. Just last week, just about everyone on the web thought this was a hoax or vaporware….
..of course, now we need the review and the benchmarks.
As the other guys said here, “if it’s slow, then it doesn’t matter if it’s a little cheaper.”
There has resently been a couple of new emulators released iEmulator($23.95) and GuestPC($69.99). So I wonder if anyone has tested them to see how well they fair compared to Virtual PC ($129) or Bochs and QEMU (both free).
I bought Guest PC two weeks ago to view Publisher documents only. My iBook G3 700 (80GB, 384 MB) installed Win 98 initially but on restart had problems with the sound/network/display drivers. Installing Win98 over the top again fixed all these so I presume it was not Guest PC. Next I had problems downloading the extra large (18 MB) IE 6 installer file. Did it in two goes after tech support suggest I give the Guest PC a static IP different from my Mac. It installs not only IE but is a total network upgrade. I have not had any problems since. I installed Publisher alone from Office 2000 Pro.
Now I can view the files people email me and print them to postscript using the built-in LaserWriter driver and view them in Preview. It does all I need, but slowly. For the price I would recommend it to anyone needing infrequent Windows access other than games. BTW there is no folder sharing as in VPC or drag and drop to the Windows desktop, but instead uses Mac OS X Windows sharing and my Mac can see the Windows file sharing. Using CD IMG files of Windows CDs is much faster than using the real CDs.
I’d love to see a benchmark test against QEMU. I use QEMU to run AROS on my iBook G3 700Mhz. I’m sure that QEMU would be insufficent for any real work running on this iBook, due mostly to the inherent costs of emulation and the very slow hardware I’m on, but it’s either a testament to QEMU or to AROS or both that it runs sufficiently fast to do some tests with. It’s good enough, I think, where I plan to clone my native AROS install partition and boot it with QEMU when I’m portable (and therefore only have the iBook available). Of course better would be a PPC native AROS partition, but all in due time.
Erik
It works very well but is slow.
I have a Mac Mini $499 model with 512 MB of ram. I have dedicated 1/2 of my ram to Windows XP.
Even with all the XP bells and whistles turned off it is very slow.
Installing Office XP took me about 45 minutes to install!
It’s a very neat product and it works as they say but again it is very, very slow! (At least using Windows XP)
IEmulator is based on QEMU, if they´ve made any improvements to the QEMU source, it needs to be released under the GPL.. Were can I download that source? I doesn´t seem to be available right know, and the GPL requires the source to be released when the program is redistributed..
Can you copy and paste text or documents from windows to a OS X application?
Not that I see. From what I see the only way at this time to be able to share is to use SMB networking as if your MAC and Windows are 2 seperate machines on a network.
I’ve just purchased it. I tried to install Windows 2000 server, but the “wizard” kept moaning to insert the windows CD. Then I realized a dedicated w2k server cd was expected, not my MSDN CD (with professional, server and advanced server). But a reboot of the virtual machine solved this problem 🙂
Haven’t tried much, but it seems the airport connection is not used. I’ll figure that out later…